LAHORE (Staff Report) – The quality of governance in Pakistan’s provinces is improving slowly and gradually, an analysis by PILDAT has revealed.
According to PILDAT’s ‘Provincial Score Cards on Quality of Governance for 2014-2015’, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government closed the gap with the Punjab government, as both received an overall score of 68% in their performance on quality of governance in their second year of government, since assuming office in 2013.
Sindh ranks second at 59 percent in the comparative score card on overall quality of governance, followed by Balochistan at 58 percent.
Moreover, the governments of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa received a positive score – above 50% – for all 25 parameters assessed. The governments of Sindh and Balochistan also performed positively across 20 parameters, while performance deteriorated in 4 and remained stagnant in 1.
KP leads in Environmental Sustainability at 82.3% while Punjab stays on top under the parameter on Poverty Alleviation at 80.4pc.
The performance of both KP and Punjab governments has been lowest in the parameter on Gender Gap at 51% and 52.9% respectively.
According to PILDAT’s assessment, the performance of the Balochistan government has been highest for Devolution of Powers to Local Governments (77.7%) being the first to complete its Local Government elections.
Balochistan was also the first province to have operational Local Governments. Balochistan’s performance is lowest in Public Transport at 41.3pc for which Sindh outperforms the remaining provinces at 78.3pc. However, according to PILDAT’s assessment, the Sindh government has been weakest in bridging the Gender Gap in the province.
The Punjab government garnered the highest score of 84.8 percent for Clean Efficient and Economic Public Procurements, across all provinces, among all 25 Governance Assessment Parameters.
On the other hand, the Government of Sindh received the lowest score of 38.5% for Gender Gap among all parameters under consideration.
The comparative analysis on quality of governance across Pakistan’s provinces is carried out by PILDAT to highlight key areas of strengths and potential areas requiring improvement in the quality of governance.
The objective behind PILDAT’s initiative on Assessment of the Quality of Governance is that as democracy progresses in Pakistan, public focus should now be on the performance of democracy, distinct from the process of democracy.
With this Score Card, PILDAT seeks to understand the extent to which the democratic Governments have delivered to their citizens in terms of providing ‘Good Governance’.
The initiative is by no means an exercise to criticise the performance of the government, but in fact is a collaborative effort intended to enable us in making informed, fact-based assessment regarding provinces.
The data for the Provincial Score Cards was requested by PILDAT and was provided by the provincial governments. It was supplemented with published surveys (i.e. Labor Force Survey, Pakistan Economic Survey, PSLM etc.)
Several meetings were held with Government Departments during the process of this assessment. A draft of the analysis and Score Card was shared with all the four provincial governments for feedback.
